An Experimental Study On The Effect Of Reading-based Lexical Approach On Junior Middle School Students’ Cloze Test Performance

It is proposed by previous researches that lexical chunks are the minimum units of language input, storage and output, which possess both lexical and grammatical character, they can be taught and retrieved as a whole to improve language comprehension and production. Lexical approach is about how lexical chunks should be applied to language teaching, and has provided a new perspective for English learning and teaching in senior high school. Cloze test, recognized by western researchers of testing as being able to measure learners’ comprehensive language performance, is also a language task very daunting for learners to tackle. Therefore, this study attempts to apply lexical approach to English reading teaching and observe if students’ cloze performance can be enhanced and their vocabulary learning strategies be positively enriched.This research adopted the experimental design and had two parallel classes as the experimental group which receives the lexical chunk teaching method and the control group which receives the traditional teaching method. After a three-month experiment, the data of pretest and posttest in the form of cloze test were collected and analyzed by t-test; the results indicate that students’ cloze performance has been significantly improved. Moreover, two questionnaires were used to measure students’ vocabulary learning strategies and the results show that they have acquired chunking strategies in their language learning and their cloze performance has been positively influenced by their retrieving of multi-word prefabricated chunks.The experimental study has some implications for junior middle school students’ cloze test teaching in the following aspects: 1) Teachers should change their traditional teaching ideas. 2) Teachers should proactively train the students’ sensitiveness to lexical chunks.